PUBLISHING THE OLD MAN'S POETRY

He started writing poetry as a kid, stayed with it the rest of his life.  Since he was a minister, he wrote mostly spiritual poetry.  He had a number of churches during his years as a pastor, but most of the poems he wrote (the ones I still have) came out in a newsletter called "The Chimes." A few of his poems ended up in magazines, but I don't know much about that.  Too many years have gone by, too much water under the bridge, and too much of a chore to go through all the papers he left behind.  I might not have enough time left to get that done, but I'm going to publish some of his poems here before long.  I think he deserves that.

Basil Philip Martin was born in Burns, Oregon and died in Winona, Mississippi at the age of 75.  That was in 1983, thirty years ago, and I'm just not getting around to doing something with his poetry.  He was fussy about his papers, gave me instructions about what I should do when he passed on.  He didn't want them destroyed, and I can't blame him for that.  So when he died, I boxed up his papers and made sure they were safely stored.  The old man was a prolific writer, so he left lots of stuff behind . . . and now it's time to turn some of it into a book. 

I followed the family tradition and wrote poetry over the years.  A lot of what I've written is cowboy poetry, far different from what he wrote.  Our styles aren't alike.  I have devoted some time to the study of poetry, and I think what he wrote is pretty good.  Some of it is excellent, some is good, and some is fairly mediocre.  That leaves me with a bit of a problem.  What should go into the book and what should be left out?  After some consideration, I don't feel worthy of making that call.  I don't know what poems he penned were his favorites, but I know he would've been fussy about what should go into a book. 

I recently published several books knowing full well they weren't my best work.  I wrote them many years ago, toyed with the idea of rewriting them, and finally decided to publish them in their original form (but with some corrections).  Writers shouldn't destroy their earlier works, and I don't have many of the poems he wrote early in life.  But I''ve decided to go with my first thoughts about putting this book together, and that's to just wing it and not be an editor.  Some poems will be better than others, but that's just the way it is.  And I do this fully aware that my opinion is just my own, and that other people may like certain poems I don't expecially favor.

I don't even have a title yet, but I'm leaning toward calling the book The Gathering Ground.  If there was anything the old man loved, it was a gathering of people.  That title fits him.